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In hiring new Toronto police chief, board may look beyond the usual suspects

Some say new blood is needed to change Toronto police culture, but corporate experience suggests internal hires may be more successful.

TTC CEO Andy Byford is one example of an outsider brought in to rejuvenate an agency in bad need of a shakeup. (LUCAS OLENIUK / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Julian Fantino was the closest Toronto has come to hiring an outsider. Though a long-timer with Toronto police, he was chief of the York Region force when brought into Toronto's top cop job. (kevin frayer / CP)

The Toronto police board is open to breaking with tradition and hiring a chief from outside, chair Alok Mukherjee indicated while discussing the civilian body’s decision not to renew Chief Bill Blair’s contract.

“I don’t think the board will foreclose the option of looking broadly,” Mukherjee told reporters Wednesday. “As I have said, in the coming days and weeks the board will be engaging in more focused conversation on all aspects of the search, including how widely the board wants to go.

“I think there are some advantages to it, but I will wait to hear what my colleagues have to say,” he added.

As the Toronto Police Services Board launches a search for Blair’s replacement, it faces a delicate choice that managers must grapple with, between the transformative potential of an outsider and the familiarity and know-how of an insider.

Every Toronto police chief since the creation of the Metro police department in 1957 has built his career within the force. Julian Fantino’s tenure, spanning 2000 to 2005, is the closest the Toronto Police Service has come to having an outsider in charge: he was head of the York Regional Police Service when he was hired as TPS chief, but had previously served for 23 years with the Metro police.

Calls for a shakeup have been amplified since the release of a report last week by retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci, which called for a broad shift in police attitudes. Iacobucci wrote that officers should abandon the idea that police-related deaths are inevitable and strive to improve their interactions with mentally disturbed people.

“You can do all the training you want,” he said in an interview with the Star. “But if culture is inconsistent with the training, then you’ve got a real problem.”

Blair publicly embraced Iacobucci’s report in an emotional news conference, holding the document aloft and stating, “This is not a report that will gather dust. This is a report that will gather momentum.”

But Blair, due to leave next April, will no longer have the chance to fully implement Iacobucci’s recommendations, and some have suggested that an outside candidate would be best suited to shaking up the force.

“Perhaps there’s a greater probability that someone coming externally would not feel as committed to the existing culture,” said Councillor , who served on the police board between 2006 and 2008. “Because if you grow up in the existing culture, there’s less of an inclination to bring about changes. Simply because, one could argue: Why didn’t you make the changes prior?”

Hiring outside leadership has become trendy in the private sector. External recruitment of chief executives at big U.S. firms hit a nearly two-decade high in 2012, reaching 29 percent, according to a report by the talent scouts Crist|Kolder Associates that looked at Fortune 500 and Standard & Poor’s 500 companies.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Transit Commission looked abroad when it named a new chief in 2012, picking the Englishman Andy Byford, who had only been with the commission for a few months before his elevation to the top post and had previously worked for transit agencies in London, England, and Sydney, Australia. His tenure to date has been largely successful, ushering in what many consider improved customer service.

But recent research has cast doubt on the wisdom of hiring outside candidates. Matthew Bidwell, an associate management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, published a study in 2012 suggesting that external hires might be a bad investment.

The survey, which covered six years of employee data from a financial services firm, found that outsiders were 61 per cent more likely to be laid off or fired than internal hires, despite generally having better credentials,

“It took a surprisingly long time for the outsider to get up to speed,” Bidwell said in an interview, particularly when it came to building relationships with colleagues.

He added that even in cases when an organization, such as the Toronto Police Service — is seeking a culture shift, hiring from within can produce better results. “I think there is an argument that an insider is better positioned to push that change through,” Bidwell said. “When you bring someone in from the outside, they’re trying to establish themselves” and may be less focused on institutional change.

He noted the case of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, an insider who produced a massive culture shift at the company, shedding layers of bureaucracy through layoffs and making the corporate giant more competitive.

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